Hypertext Proposal on Restaurant Wait Staff

For my final hypertext I have chosen to explore the low wage life through the lives of restaurant wait staff. Having been exposed to the restaurant business my entire life and working first hand in restaurants I can share some of my own experiences as well as add insight to other stories including those from currently and previously employed wait staff. I hope to give my readers knowledge of why certain groups or individuals are employed specifically as wait staff, what the classifications or job descriptions that comply with this particular title, and why most people employed as wait staff hold multiple jobs, work the longest hours, do the most hard labor, and still live below the poverty line.

As American’s we are constantly exposed to the ideal that hard work pays off, but this revered virtue is not what it used to be. Hard work alone does not pay off like it might have fifty years ago (45). There are more bills to pay, less high paying jobs, an insufficient minimum wage, and little opportunity for members of the lower and uneducated classes to be hired at jobs paying the amount they need to survive. The majority of wait staff currently employed at restaurants in the United States are immigrant workers. They are not Americans, but they are an essential part of America (91). These “ethnic enclaves” that serve America’s economy come from the subcultures of Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, Mexicans, Hondurans, and Ethiopians who have relocated in the United States in hopes for jobs and a better life. Instead, they are stuck at the bottom for many reasons, including; fluency in English, proper immigration papers, education, or other handicaps that have imprisoned them in an “archipelago of scattered zones of cheap labor that promote the country’s interests” (91).

Humble hands may produce luxury but the long hours of hard labor should be compensated but ample pay and benefits (77). The U.S. government defines poverty as 21,000 a year for a family with one adult and three children. That number requires earning $4.29 above the minimum wage an hour, assuming the employee can work forty-hour weeks for all fifty-two weeks in the year (9). This number is impossible for most people employed as wait staff because they are paid minimum wage, if not lower, for their work. Like many Korean restaurants in the L.A. area, restaurants have devised inventive ways of swindling waiters and cooks who are not citizens with proper documentation. Because there jobs are kept behind the scenes these workers often work up to twelve hours a day, six days a week, violating state wage laws (19). California’s minimum of $8.00 an hour applies to waiters so many restaurants “cook the books” by faking time cards showing shorter shifts (19). Restaurants are prime environments for these types of scans and the workers are the ones suffering the most.

In closing, I hope to use information from “Fast Food Nation”,” Nickel and Dimed”, “The Working Poor”, and other works to illustrate that restaurant wait staff are members of the “Forgotten America” and their job requirements, pay, and benefits are not sufficient to live. These people are most commonly immigrants, documented or not, they can not afford to be neglected any longer.